Apr 23, 2008

I always wanted to host my own radio show. I got the itch when I appeared as a guest on the Seeing Beyond Show, with Bonnie Colleen.

Have you ever wanted to host your own radio show?

There are numerous ways to go about doing it, if you're interested.

The traditional way was people would approach a radio station that ran programming similar to the type of show they wanted to run. In order to host a show, you would meet with the station program director, and decide upon a time slot, cost, and time period to run the show. Typically, this could cost anywhere from $100 - $3,000 per show segment. It would then be up to the show host to find sponsors to pay for the show, or to get "syndicated" where the station found the sponsors for the host.

Old-school Radio on the AM/FM dial:

The upside of running a radio show this way is the show host station usually had high-end audio equipment for producing and recording a show. Therefore, the show quality is likely to be pretty high. The downside of running a radio show this way is that it might be difficult to guarantee you get a recording of the show. Or, it might be difficult to get control over certain aspects of the show (time slot, advertisers, etc.). Another challenge is that show station rates and formats can change suddenly and without warning, causing you to lose much of your following you have built. Last, you also lose the ability to people to hear your show or discover your show as easily via the Internet. This is still an exciting way to launch a radio show; however, you may have the drawback of (1) high cost, and (2) narrow audience limited to a specific geography.

Internet Radio

The new alternatives with hosting radio shows is the Podcasting approach. I like this approach very much, for several reasons: (1) People can download the show, and the show may be listed on your show guest websites, (2) Internet shows like TalkShoe Pay YOU rather than you paying them. Therefore, your investment is your time and energy. You could still sell sponsorships to the show, if you had a high enough following, and (3) You create a long-tail of RSS feeds through the show. Many shows on the internet that rank high on iTunes receive 500 guests per show. These shows are typically 1 hour in length and produced regularly on a set schedule.